The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely sophisticated devices, and computer systems may be found in many different settings. One of the most important developments in making computers not only more powerful, but easier to use, was the development of sophisticated user interfaces, such as a Graphical User Interface (GUI). A GUI uses visual representations of common items to allow a user to operate a computer system. In most GUI-based systems, various windows, icons, symbols, menus, etc. are manipulated or activated by a computer user via a pointing device (e.g., a keyboard, mouse, trackball, touchpad, trackpad, or speech recognition device), which allows the user to give instructions to the computer. The movement of the pointing device is usually translated to the movement of an animated arrow or cursor, displayed on the computer screen. By moving the pointing device, the user can position the cursor at various locations on the computer screen. Then, by activating a button on the pointing device, the user can invoke various commands and options on the graphical user interface.
One way that graphical user interfaces are increasingly being used is to display a topological visual model (also called a topology) of inter-related objects. The objects and their relationships are often represented in computer memory via a graph that has nodes and edges. The nodes represent the objects, and the edges represent the relationships. The GUI creates the topological visual model on a display screen by analyzing the nodes and edges.
An object may be any data and/or may represent any entity. In one example, objects may be the various hardware devices, software programs, and data that are connected via a computer network, such as clients, servers, routers, storage devices, applications, and databases. The objects are inter-related, e.g., in that a client is connected to a server, a storage device stores a database, and an application uses a database. The topology typically represents the objects via icons displayed on a display screen and represents the relationships via lines between the icons. For example, servers might be represented in the topology via rectangles whose appearances suggest racks of computer components and labels of server names, and the relationships between the servers might be represented by lines that connect the rectangles.
While this topological visual model can work well for a small number of objects and relationships, as the number of objects and relationships increases, the display screen can quickly become so cluttered with icons and lines that the user experiences difficulty distinguishing them. If the user has a vision impairment, this problem is exacerbated.
Thus, without a better way to represent objects and their inter-relationships, users will continue to experience difficulty in interacting with a topological visual model.